The Harvest is Plentiful

-or- Ask the Lord of the Harvest to Send Out Laborers

Almost one year ago, I moved to Toluca, IL to begin my first call at St. John Lutheran Church.  In my time here in small-town Illinois I have learned more about farming than a city boy thought could be learned.  And so, I appreciate this past Sunday's texts in a whole new way.  Here are the parts I refer to:

"...for you reap whatever you sow.  If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.  So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.  So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all...." (Galatians 6:7-10)

and again,

"He said to them, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."  (Luke 10:2)

One thing I have learned about farming--and I believe it is regarded as a startling change even to veteran farmers--is that, today, the laborers in the field are, indeed, few.  Due to advances in farming technology and changes in the economics of land and agronomy, only a few laborers are needed in the field.  Years ago, a family farm could be found every mile or so; and that family farmed the few hundred adjacent acres.  Now, farmsteads have disappeared to make room for larger and larger planters and combines.  Now, in order to be competitive, one must farm several hundred to over a thousand acres.  Land is owned by one group, and rented out to others to do the labor of cultivation.  Plots of soil are spread out over miles.  These changes are both good and difficult.  Farming has become more efficient.  Culture and community, however, have been indelibly altered.

Whatever ones opinion on the quality of the changes, it has become true: harvests are plentiful, but laborers are few.  Teams of people and animals have been replaced by individuals who operate machines: tractors, combines, trucks that haul grain to the elevators, and other cultivating equipment.  Farming has industrialized, allowing fewer people to do more work than was ever done in the past--and to do it quicker.

If the goal is to farm well, efficiently and profitably, these changes, as difficult as they may be, are good.  The problem arises, however, when we find that our culture often wishes to have more--and it wants more faster and easier.  This desire has become so pervasive, that we see it bleeding into our churches (and not just in farm communities, but in many contexts).

Thus, what holds true of the world--that plentiful harvests can and should be brought in by few laborers--is applied to the church, to our spiritual lives and work.

Faith communities rely more and more on a priestly class to labor in the spiritual harvest.  Larger congregations leave the field labor to ordained and lay staff.  In mega churches, and today even in smaller congregations, churches rely on equipment and programs instead of good old fashioned manual labor and personal contact.  Gone are the days when the whole family pitches in to steer the plow, walk beans, detassel corn or pick the crop by hand.

The difference is that, in farming, advancements in technology and method do not jeopardize the quality of crop at harvest time.  Quite the contrary, today just as much attention has been placed in making harvests of quality grain.  We have become so good at it that the quality of crops nowadays is better and more reliable than crops of generations past. The same does not necessarily hold true for our churches.  Often times the focus on quantity makes the quality to suffer.

You may ask, quantity and quality of what?  Well, Jesus was talking about a harvest of souls, if you will.  The spiritual laborers were being sent out into the fields to plant the Word about the Kingdom of God like a seed in the minds and hearts of people.

Sowing that type of seed--the spiritual type--resists industrialization.

When Paul writes to the Galatians, his message is that every individual is a spiritual farmer--or if you prefer, we are all hired men and women, since God owns the ground.  Whatever each person sows, that is what that person reaps.  Each of us is required to tend and care for the soil in which the Word is planted.  Each and every individual is responsible for nourishing the plants that spring up from the ground.  For this to take place, what is needed is an passionate response to the Good News.  Every person must be watered and fed by the Word, in order to bear good fruit...good grain.

And in Luke, Jesus' aim is not simply to point out that the laborers are few, but to encourage more laborers to come out and work in the field.  In this passage, Jesus is sending out 70 of his followers to plant the Word throughout the land.  Jesus is not satisfied with 12, and he is not satisfied with 70 workers.  There is no spiritual farming equipment that allows a few laborers to haul in major harvests.  Spiritually speaking, each plant requires a laborer to tend it...and someone is needed to help nourish each laborer.  And so, the individual, impassioned response to the Good News also entices each person to look not just to their own harvest, but to the harvest of the whole world.

In other words, we are all called and sent to be apostles, or missionaries...or spiritual farmers.

Thus, we go to church for a purpose: to learn the art and science of spiritual agronomy.

Luckily we have a great instructor.

Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of time.  Just as the farmer will work hard and long hours during planting and during the harvest, just as the farmer works with haste to get the work done in the allotted time, so too must we spiritual farmers work like we have a purpose and a deadline.  There is no time to waste, friends, we have to get the corn and beans in.